


white hair

by tzitzimeme



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 16:58:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15175229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzitzimeme/pseuds/tzitzimeme
Summary: She was never making a mistake, because there was never any chance to turn back. She simply acted out the role she was born to play.4.3 spoilers.





	white hair

**Author's Note:**

> written in 1 hour.

Lately, Tsuyu has been wondering how old Gosetsu is, really.

She has never met anyone with hair quite as white as his. “Hair slowly turns to white as we age,” he had explained to her when she asked, and it was fascinating to imagine. The next day, she looked into the roots of her hairs the moment she woke, and then slowly sifted through each strand before Gosetsu questioned what she was doing.

“I’m looking for white hair,” Tsuyu explained, and Gosetsu let out the kind of laugh that only old men would have. “What?”

“Silly Tsuyu,” he said, before patting her on the head. “You are still much too young for that.”

That answer doesn’t really make much sense to her. Perhaps it’s because she knows too little to understand the notion of age, and she knows too little to even realize how little she knows– but, taking it as face value, she understands that she is young and Gosetsu is old. To be young is to have black hair, pretty as the night sky, locks that drape around her neck and need to be brushed before they tangle; to be old is to have white hair, shorter and coarser, and a forehead bright enough to reflect light off it, like the moon.

The first time Tsuyu mentioned how shiny Gosetsu’s forehead was, he let out a surprised cough, while Hien could only laugh. “Truly, only the kind of impertinence a young child could have,” Hien had said, and that was the first time Hien laughed at her, because he was a scary man who oftentimes looked upon her with the eyes of a staring raven, black hair, broad shoulders.

Since he has black hair, Hien, too, is young. But there is a remarkable difference between him and herself, which makes Tsuyu think, exactly how old must you be to gain white hair? “Grandpa,” she finally asks one day, in her half-confused way, “how old are you?”

“Ah? Well... take a guess,” Gosetsu decides to say, putting a plate of dango down in front of her.

Tsuyu reaches for her snack, but has the curiosity to continue with her question before chowing down. “Hmm... I think, three hundred years old!”

The attendant by their door tries to stifle a chuckle, while Gosetsu looks a little less than pleased. “Not quite,” he grumbles, but even when he isn’t guffawing, there are golden crescents in the irises of his eyes, like little smiling curves of amusement. They are similar to the real moon, in a way; even when it is not in the sky, she can count on it to appear again when night falls, gentle in its light, seated in a vastness of stars. Gosetsu would never do her wrong, and she does not know enough to even consider the notion. She definitely doesn’t know enough to see anything weird about falling asleep next to Gosetsu as she rests from her evening tea, because she will always arise to the bright dawn in her futon, blanket tucked in gently so as to not wake her, black hair splayed across her pillow.

\---

Yugiri once called her shameless, but not in a biting way. Truly, Tsuyu’s shamelessness is something inherent to her, a side-effect of her innocence, her untouchable youth. It is something that comes so naturally to her, in the way that she would get up in the morning while rubbing her eyes, saying that her kimono is falling off and she doesn’t know how to tie the obi, can someone please help her? Once, her attendant decided to adorn her clothing with lavish ribbons, tying knots and adding in little trinkets that mean questionable things in the secret language of lovers. When Gosetsu saw them, he was furious; Tsuyu simply thought they were pretty.

In the end, no matter what happens, Tsuyu always goes to bed with a full belly, the moonlight gently streaming through her window. Gosetsu is a stubborn old man, and years of diligent service has left him with a strong distaste for prolonged unproductivity– but recently, he has caught himself thinking that perhaps this isn’t so bad after all. Every unsurprising day begets a predictable ending, the stars and the moon making their pathways across the night sky, and sometimes, Gosetsu would even sleep half as well as Tsuyu does.

(And that is why, when Tsuyu returns with tears in her eyes and a persimmon in her hands, Gosetsu knows not what to say. It was good to believe, for as long as it lasted, that the peacefulness would last forever. That Tsuyu would never grow old.

But, in hindsight, he should have seen this coming. Families break apart. Seasons change. Dynasties fall.

Everything ends.)

\---

Under the moonlight, Yotsuyu wakes up and recalls something that Gosetsu had said to her, in a night so far away that it must have belonged to another life.

“Will you grow up to be happy, I wonder?” She had been lying to her side, not quite asleep but also too sleepy to do anything but feign slumber. “I know that the kami preserved us for good reason. I do hope that you will find yours, Tsuyu.”

She had tried to scrub those words out of her mind. When that failed, she instead began to think, fruitlessly, about what they meant. She never worshipped any god, but has always longed to take her fate into her own hands. But right as she is about to reclaim her rightful place in this story, she remembers all of Gosetsu’s kindness, the sound of his ridiculous laughter, and it all hangs onto her like strings, pulling her away from the darkness from which she knows she is destined to go.

Perhaps Gosetsu was not so old, after all. He still had it in him, a sentimental yearning, a desire as sincere as a child’s. The hope that the irredeemable can be redeemed. A dream of simple happiness.

If she was a different person, anyone else at all, she would have said one last thing to him. The only honest thing she would suffer herself to admit, the only thing she is absolutely sure of.

Tsuyu’s happiness was real.

But it was never meant to last. Not in this world.

In the night, she rose without a sound. She found a knife in the darkness, and slipped out of her room, into the courtyard. When she heard a familiar voice, relived the burning hatred towards the people who dared to be her real family, the rage returns, all at once, and the blood on her hands is so fresh, so liberating.

Asahi tells her his plan, and she nearly laughs at the absurdity of it all, the idea that she would betray the very kindness she had never felt before in her life– and, oh, she would, of course; she would destroy it all in a heartbeat.

The Garleans brought Yotsuyu her black dress, and the very same old pipe. She adorns her headdress and walks forward when her cue is given. She stares down Hien and the Warrior of Light with every little bit of hatred that they deserve.

Becoming a primal is a simple thing, really. It had surprised herself even, her inability to let go. The strength of her innumberable sufferings.

She did not allow herself to think about how she might be making a mistake, or how she had a chance to turn back. Because none of those things are true; she cannot wash her sins off her back. This is not a surprise twist, or a unfathomable tragedy. She is simply acting out the role she was born to play. She will fight and she will burn, so there will be nothing left but misfortune in her wake; nothing but the voices of the damned living, cursing the witch of Doma’s name.

The whole of Castrum Fluminis turns into the stage of her demise, and spider lilies bloom on the witch’s grave.

\---

And when Asahi bleeds, swords piercing through his writhing body, she finally breathes a sigh that only an old woman would have.

There is nothing left to say. In the hazy, darkening corners of her eyes, in the embrace of what she thinks must be death, she looks at the whiteness of her hair and realizes how fitting it is. A head full of white for the young girl who grew up too fast.

“What’s the matter?” She looks up, then, at the Warrior of Light, because in her fading consciousness, she still knows that their somber expression does not fit the role they were meant to play. “The witch of Doma will soon be dead.”

She closes her eyes, because in the end, she doesn’t expect a reply. But she hears it anyway, from the warrior who never speaks, from the savior of the realm who should know better than this. And she smiles, like how an old woman would smile at a child, because only a truly innocent soul could have ever believed she was worth saving.

But, perhaps because she is dying, she decides acknowledge that other life, one last time. Because Tsuyu’s happiness was real.

“I wonder... was the fruit as sweet... as he remembered?”

(And the Warrior of Light would see, as the aether left Yotsuyu’s body and her white hair slowly turned to black, that there was something about her smile that was finally happy.)


End file.
